Hasn't that been said a million times in different ways. Jesus gave up his own life so that we might live. There has never been a greater demonstration of selfless action. As argued in the previous blog the problem lies in having an image of oneself that we then attach to as if it was our self. From this we are able to see our self as different and more important than others. From this comes all evil and suffering both against our self and others. When that attachment is gone, or we see the image as unreal and worthless (the result is the same) -- this is also call the Ego -- then we see our self and others equally and free from any "metaphysical" difference.
To recap with a scenario. We see the problem in execution by shooting. Suppose there is a single gun that is to be used to execute a row of people in which we kneel. To the gunman if they don't know anyone they are just shooting a row of people. But if they know someone in the row, suppose it is a relative, then suddenly that same situation is very different as they decide that someone is more important than the rest. This cannot be the actual truth. Most people have someone who thinks they are important so we could invite people who think anyone in the row is important. And obviously most people think they are the most important. As the gunman shoots people down the line, we can assume each person thinks its most important when the gunman gets to them, and various people in the audience have their own views who is most important. Now the gunmen get to us, that is you or me. This is the real moment that matters to us. Our own death. But actually how is this possible? We just showed that who is important depends completely upon your perspective. Its not a real thing that is true for everyone. Somehow we have this private pact with ourselves that we are most important. And yet its not that private, secret or special cos everyone is exactly the same. When the gunman shoots us it is no different from when they shoot anyone else. No matter what we do we cannot actually justify our own death as being special.
So that shows its a nonsense belief but how does it come about? The source of the problem--as argued in the previous post--is that we have an image of ourselves, labelled with our name and memories and how we and other people value us. It is this image that we really think is ourselves most of the time. And this image is pretty permanent and inflexible. As children we develop some idea who we are and that gets chiselled in time into a pretty permanent statue. Why do powerful people like to see statues of themselves? It is just the physical version of their own, in fact all of our, mind processes in creating fixed identities. When we date a partner or speak to people it is this image that we rely upon. And if it matches the image that a date is searching for then the key fits the lock. (Obviously as a relationship matures these images get replaced with more real experiences of actual people.) And these images are just that, reflections, they are not real. The whole problem of death is that as we die we drag this inflexible statue of ourselves into the death situation and it doesn't fit. That statue was never made to change or die, why do we make films with immortal stars! But because we are attached to that image, and confused it with ourselves, when we die we are profoundly confused and struggle. All kinds of difficulty arise. People often see death as lonely. Not surprising! Our statue is being thrown in the bin, abandoned, no longer respected, no longer valued or relevant. Think how Saddam Hussein felt as his statue was torn down. This is what death does to our ego. It is shocking if we confuse that statue with our self. Of course Saddam Hussein was nothing like his statue, and the toppling of that statue should have meant nothing to him, except that we suspect he believed his own propaganda and long ago lost touch with his actual self. When people say that after death there is oblivion, it's because they are thinking about what remains once their statue is in the bin. If they recognised their real self they would not think in such fixed terms.
Now there are a few metaphors in Buddhism that have troubled me. Buddha says that his teachings are like a raft. Once we have crossed the sea we leave the raft at the shore. He also says in the Diamond Sutra that while countless being have been saved in reality no one had been saved. And in the Heart Sutra there is no attainment or path to enlightenment. The Enlightened have gained nothing, and nothing has changed.
Now these are troubling statements to anyone attached to ego or their image of self. But now I realise how to understand them without this problem.
Consider the raft. Indeed we go from raft to raft as our practice develops. Finding teaching, practice and experience that suit our development as we go. But perhaps unlike other religions we don't attach to these teachings. What was good for us, may not be good for someone else. It could even be bad for them! Expedience is the key to teachings, and a good teacher in general applies the right teaching to suit their student individually. But suppose we finally cross the sea of Samsara, the analogy has been no use to me. We just get out of that raft on the "other shore" and so what? Well the "so what" is that the ultimate raft, that has travelled with us from the start is actually our self image! When we get to the furthest shore of the sea of Samara (worldly suffering) we actually leave that statue, or image of our self behind on the shore. That has been the raft or boat that has been anchored to us and dragged us around the seas for all this time, causing all the struggle and suffering. Once we put that raft down we are no longer being tossed around on the sea! So we don't think about a new self walking up the shore, that is just a new image of us. We just think about putting the image of our self down. And letting it go as we move away. There is no vehicle for us now, we are free. It was attachment to the vehicle of Self that was the problem! Buddha actually says more than Self he says "Fixed Self". The image of our self--our internal reflection of what we know, remember and think about our self--is not real and doesn't change very much. It is ideal and actually not very useful. It is fixed and this gives us some "security." I have made it in Life, I am a big and successful man, we think. We die that moment we think this cos we start living as a statue not as a real living breathing person any more. You are really only as good as your last good deed, the statue is false. It is true there is a karma store of good deeds, but we can wipe it all out in one move if we start to erect the statue "Here stands a good person." Such a mental statue will draw demons from myriad worlds to taunt and humiliate us and pull us down.
So how can Buddha save countless beings and yet no beings were saved? So it is correct that Buddha's teachings have drawn countless beings towards the correct view and path by which they have gained liberation and enlightenment. But as we have seen Enlightenment is really the putting down of their internal fixed statues. There is a junk yard of countless statues. If Buddha said countless beings have really been saved he would be talking about the junk yard. Obviously none of these discarded statues have been saved, they were not even real people, just mental images of people. The saved beings now live without fixed statues or attachment to such things. They are free. If Buddha himself thought he had saved people he would be thinking of people's false images, but being Enlightened himself he knows that the true self is infinite and quite unlike these engraved statue.
So how can we follow a path to Enlightenment that doesn't even exist? And when we Enlighten there is no attainment or change. When the unenlightened mind thinks about itself and other people it thinks of fixed ideal statues. It is completely attached to its own statue in particular, and perhaps the statues of friends and family too. I've not mentioned it but there is a dark side to this also, because while it can be attached, it can also be repelled. That attachment can he hateful and loathing of the statues of other people. But the result is the same we anchor into statues that we drag around with us. I say "drag" because while the world is constantly flowing and changing the statue is relatively fixed and so it never fits into the real situation and is awkward and troublesome. Being attached to an image of our self we don't ever really fit into any situation. Things feel wrong. But when we Enlighten there is a sudden switch to rejecting statues themselves. That is not liking or disliking the statue or self-image we have formed, but suddenly realising that the self-image is an imposter all together. Why carry this worthless piece of junk around when we have our actual self: living and breathing right here, right now, free, easy and always with us without any problem and all the time. Our real self changes with the situation, it is not burdened with being good or bad, liked or not liked: there is no fixed statue here that lasts even a split second upon which to hang anything. The moment we go to hang any characteristic the moment is gone. We are always moving forward, but effortlessly like the water in a river slowly flowing and going wherever it goes it doesn't even need to know where or how. It just flows. So when we Enlighten we slough off the path, the anchors, the vessel or ship that has kept us at sea for so long. In a sense all these things do exist, but they end up in the junk yard. It is stepping away from that vehicle of self-image that we confuse with our true self and which we think wrongly is journeying to some destination of Enlightenment that is the actual problem. Some people indeed can have sudden enlightenment at any moment. They suddenly realise the imposter of fake self and reject it. Once we reject it we are already in touch with true self. It is enough to just move far enough away from the tangible fake self so that we can see it to have entered True Self. Anything you think is you, anything that makes you special or unspecial is just that fake self. It is for the bin. Buddha said all things are non-self, but I wonder if the most important part of this is rejecting the tangible false obvious self that we hold on to in place of our freedom. The tangible self is quite vast though it includes the self that our parents gave us, the one our friends believe in, the one we have built socially: it is all those tangible things we have accumulated and believe make us. All this distracts us from the true self that is actually doing this grasping for something solid. Realise that this grasping is for something fake, that weighs us down, and see it go in the bin as worthless.
There is no point trying to discover what our true self is, to start sculpting a new statue: by now we should be sick of fixed tangible statues that take our place. We want to live right now as we truly are, and look at the Self now as hopeless and worthless substitute. We discard this shell on the beach. And so it is quite right, leaving all images of our self behind, no longer confusing our true self with some limited small fixed mental image, indeed nothing does really change. Its the same world and life, our bodies, lives and minds are the same but gradually we start to see those thoughts, words and actions that we did based upon a fixed idea of our self and replace them with thoughts, words and actions based upon rejecting a foreign fixed sense of self. For instance we are more open to other people cos as the gun goes down the firing line we see each death the same. We realise that each life being extinguished is the same and when the gun gets to us it means nothing more special than when it shot the person before or after in the line. This does not make life any less special, but it evens it out. We value others more and our self less so that we see them the same. We access other lives with the same freedom and interest that we access our own. The world is now vast as we access all parts equally instead of haunting just the small world around this precious solid statue that we used to worship. We see things clearly, space is open and not distorted around a huge gravitational mass of our imploded self reflected self-image. Death, suffering and bad times are now no longer things that happen to other people and which we shy away from in fear. They happen all the time, and when they happen to us it is no different from when it happens to others. Good times are also everywhere to see, and sometime they happen to others and sometime our self: it doesn't matter. And so we are free, the anchor is broken and we exist everywhere without care or worry.
Its a broad statement but aren't all religious people seeking this exact same thing?
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